Episode 522: Civving Up

This week’s episode is full of industry news in the wake of The Game Awards. There wasn’t many news items but there was plenty to talk about with the Awards, especially with this week’s Gaming Flashback, Unlimited Adventures.

This week’s news items include:

Let us know what you think.

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This week’s episode has heated arguments between Jordan and Jonah, as this new podcast runs a little long. However, there are tons of news items to make up for the lack of a new show last week.

The news items include:

  • Bethesda’s Hines unexcited over next-gen console launch
  • Borderlands 2‘s melee skill tree for Zer0 “thanks to them ignoring” Pitchford
  • EA’s Gibeau brags he has not green-lit any single player games
  • Valve responds to angry indie developers over $100 Steam Greenlight fee
  • Crystal Dynamics: Lara Croft had become “unrelatable
  • City of Heroes may be saved from shutdown
  • Ron Gilbert blames point and click adventure stagnation on DOOM

The contest continues – just mention what your favorite game from the 2000’s was – and a winner will be announced next week.

Gaming Flashback: The Incredible MachineGaming Flashback: The Incredible Machine

The Incredible Machine (TiM) is a game designed and developed by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnel (now co-founder of GarageGames and their successful title Marble Blast Ultra on the 360 and co-founder in Dynamix makers of A-10 Tank Killer and The Red Baron). At the time, The Incredible Machine series came out of the shop known as Jeff Tunnel Productions.

Jeff Tunnel Productions published the first Incredible Machine games from 1993 to 1995 while Sierra Entertainment published all the rest of their titles all the way up to 2001. What is The Incredible Machines all about? It’s a game where you must build a series of Rube Goldberg devices in a “needlessly complex fashion” all to perform some simple tasks. That is the entire point to a Rube Goldberg device, which was originally defined as “accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply.”

I think everyone has seen a Rube Goldberg device, their are examples in science museums, and entire Myth Busters Episode about them, they appear in many movies (Goonies used one to open the fence to let in Chunk after he does his dance as did Doc Brown in Back to the Future to cook his breakfast and get his dog food).

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Gaming Podcast 112: Ubiquitous, Is That a Word?Gaming Podcast 112: Ubiquitous, Is That a Word?

This week we’re flashing back to Zaxxon and into a bit of a reflective history on the NES Satellite accessory. We reflect upon how bad Don sucks at Mass Effect and get tips from the community. We’re also checking in on some news this week including:

We’re also asking a few questions of the week, you can answer them all, one or none (but we’ll give you sad face)! What’s your favorite video game accessory since you started gaming, what actor can make a video game movie a success?